


Brief Lives

by AngelinaVansen (catherineflowers)



Category: Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: Adultery, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Post-Endgame
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-30
Updated: 2018-05-30
Packaged: 2019-05-16 01:19:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,718
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14801628
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/catherineflowers/pseuds/AngelinaVansen
Summary: After getting married in their second year in the Delta Quadrant, Janeway and Chakotay must redefine their relationship now that they are home.





	Brief Lives

**Author's Note:**

> Written in the early 2000s for Kadi's Beach Blanket Bingo contest.
> 
> Warnings for rather twisted content here.

Kathryn comes up from the water with a gasp, the sun hitting her face like a forcefield. 

She loves it. Heat and light on her skin, sky and cloud above her, air that moves. These are best things about being home again. Even now, three months after their return, waking up to a sunlit bedroom still feels like heaven.

She swims for the shore, swift strokes that stretch the muscles in her back and arms. This is how she's keeping fit now she doesn't have stress to tire her out each day.

On the beach, her boyfriend Isaac lifts his head sleepily from the blanket as she approaches, regarding her with one half-open eye. He is a beautiful thing, a beautiful twenty-five year old thing with an incredible mind, and he's never with her. Not really. He has fallen asleep with his PADD on his chest. All around him are the notes for the concerto he is composing. She flops down next to him, still breathless from her swim, and kisses him softly on the lips. He goes back to sleep and she towels her arms and legs, brushing the sand off her feet.

This afternoon, when it gets cooler, she will take him for a walk along this beach. Hold his hand. Talk to him. Simple things.

It is also good to be simple. 

She has a promotion, but she's not taking it just yet. She doesn't want to. Right now she wants to enjoy the house she bought on the beach, go swimming every day, be with this man. Sleep through the night without fear of being woken by an emergency.

Even being alone has been quite a thrill. Despite the fact that Voyager was a small ship, and a lost ship at that, Kathryn can't remember having solitude like this. Alone with her own thoughts for days at a time. Isaac has given her that space. It is rare they even spend the night together.

It's been wonderful. She's walked around her house naked. Gotten drunk a couple of times, on real alcohol. Slept until noon on most days. Had sex an unprecedented amount. 

More importantly, though, it's given her time to think about everything. All the things she couldn't afford to consider when one hundred and fifty lives were on her shoulders. 

The people who died. Their families. The decisions she made. The times she bent the Prime Directive. Seven of Nine. Naomi, Neelix, Kes. Harry, Tom and B'Elanna, Tuvok, even.

Chakotay.

She looks at her hands as she towels her knees. Her heft hand particularly. She took off her wedding ring two weeks ago, just casually, as she washed her hands after visiting the bathroom. Just casually, as she always does. The only difference is that she hasn't put it back on. 

It is still sitting in the bathroom, an admission of sorts.

She supposes she and Chakotay will have to address each other at some stage, talk things through. She suspects they will need legal counsel to do it, though. Communication hasn't been their strong point these past few years.

She hasn't spoken to him at all since the Voyager debriefings officially ended. He had family to visit off world, and she was secretly pleased he hadn't wanted her along. It would have been hard to be welcomed into a family she didn't want to be part of. Even harder to explain why they needed separate bedrooms.

No, she didn't think it would be long before one of them found the courage to ask for a divorce.

On Voyager, such a thing would have been impossible. Not only logistically, but for morale as well. In many ways, the marriage between the two commanding officers had been the final unification of Starfleet and Maquis. It had been such a cause for celebration. 

It had given many the leave to start their own relationships and families, as well. Many had. Within a year of her own marriage, Kathryn had performed no less than sixteen wedding ceremonies for her crew. Most of these couples had gone on to have children. It had made Voyager a ship full of families, of life, of hope, of the spirit of exploration. It was something of which both Kathryn and Chakotay had been very proud. At least at first. 

At first. 

She thinks back to those heady, early days. The days that felt so dangerous, when they were unsure of everything. The crew. The Delta Quadrant. Each other. When their relationship had consisted of little more than snatched couplings when they were supposed to be having meetings, the occasional night when on shore leave.

Sex, essentially. The intense sexual attraction that had burned bright between them right from the start. 

Those had been exciting times. Crazy times. Having quickies in the cellar room of Sandrine's while the crew played pool just metres away. Overcome with passion. Trying to convince a Romulan scientist that she wasn't a threat while Chakotay had her bent over her desk, pounding into her from behind as she talked. Trying to keep the breathlessness from her voice.

Loving him. Loving him so much it hurt, wanting him so badly it ached. Thinking when he was inside her that she never wanted it to end. Orgasms so strong they felt like dying.

Watching his eyes loving her, too. Without words, not needing them. Just his looks, his gaze. His dark eyes, burning right through her clothes. The fear that everyone knew. The excitement that they already might.

It had been a bit of an open secret right from the start, she suspected. Working together all day and then sleeping together all night, they had gotten to the stage where they were finishing each other's sentences.

The crew weren't stupid. It was an easy enough matter to check the whereabouts of the two most senior officers in the middle of the night. They probably thought it was funny.

Of course, the guessing stopped when the two of them were caught in the act.

It still makes Kathryn blush when she thinks about it. Shore leave on the Sikaran homeworld. The two of them had snuck off together and found what they thought was a secluded beach, shielded by rocks and a high cliff face. 

Together they had spent an idyllic day skinnydipping and pleasuring each other in the surf, completely unaware they were in full view of the rest of the crew on the public beach less than a hundred metres away. 

After the initial embarrassment had worn off, though, things hadn't been too bad. It certainly hadn't been the scandal she had feared. People seemed to accept her and Chakotay as a couple, even drawing strength from their togetherness.

To her surprise, their command relationship had been enhanced too. Sure, there had been a couple of lapses in judgement, oral sex in the Ready Room and desperate "last chance" screws during crisis moments, but on the whole it had helped them work together more smoothly. 

Who would have known?

So, when Chakotay got down on bended knee and proposed during a romantic afternoon stroll on the 37s' planet, she accepted eagerly.

Why wouldn't she? It had been the strongest thing she'd ever felt. She hadn't even wanted the protracted engagement she'd insisted on with Mark. John Evansville had married them the next day.

She had been happy. Oh God she'd been happy. Right then she'd had it all: the command of her dreams, a superb ship and crew, and a husband she adored more than life itself.

It had been more than she had ever dared hope for herself. Even the fact that they were lost in the Delta Quadrant hadn't seemed too much of an obstacle right then.

Together, she and Chakotay had embraced the adventure. Made the crew their family and the ship their home. They had celebrated the marriages and births among their crew and gone to bed each night fulfilled. Yes, that first year of marriage had been blissful. 

Then came the virus. New Earth. Looking back now, it seemed impossible to think that a place so close to paradise had ended the illusion of theirs.

But New Earth had opened up cracks. Exposed to each other twenty-four-seven without the distraction of duty and responsibility, they weren't the same people. Chakotay had quickly settled into the role of pioneer settler and all-round hausfrau, and Kathryn ... well, Kathryn wanted to be a starship Captain.

Things had been different between them suddenly. Suddenly they had found communication a struggle and their lovemaking filled with unspoken resentments. Why wasn't she embracing life on the planet? Didn't she welcome the chance to be alone with the man she loved? Why had he become so accepting of their fate? Didn't he know there was a whole galaxy and their home out there?

By the time Tuvok had come back for them with the serum, they both felt like strangers to each other. The experience had shaken them badly, if she was honest.

They had gone back on duty and back to their quarters and back to their lives. Things were better on the ship, just as she'd suspected they would be. Soon enough they were making love with the passion and regularity they had enjoyed before New Earth, and she had almost been able to convince herself things would be all right. Almost.

After all, this was the man she had seen weeping over her lifeless body, telling her that she couldn't die. That had shaken her, the depth of Chakotay's need. For a while she hadn't been able to get it out of her head. 

The problem was, she had admitted to herself late one night as she'd slept in his arms, she wasn't sure she would have clung to him like that if he had been the one the alien had invaded. She wasn't sure of that at all.

That had chilled her. For the first time since she'd taken her marriage vows, she felt rather alone.

Perhaps Chakotay had known. Perhaps he'd sensed it. Perhaps it had played a part in his decision to fuck Riley Frazier.

Fuck. She laughs at herself as she takes off her bikini top to bare her breasts to the afternoon sun. Even now it stings so much she has to say fuck. The thought of Chakotay making love or even having sex with that scheming slut is still too much.

That, she thinks, that was the kiss of death. Sure, he apologised profusely and flagellated himself for a month, and sure, he had been manipulated, on the brink of death and under Borg mind control, but after that, they had begun to live separate lives.

Not in front of the crew. Never in front of the crew. At functions and parties and Prixin they danced together and toasted each other and kissed. They left hand in hand gazing at each other as though they couldn't wait to get back to their quarters for soul-shaking lovemaking. In truth they would invariably sleep on opposite sides of the bed, wrapped in cold sheets.

It made it easy, so fucking easy, to ignore him totally as they faced the dilemma over crossing Borg space. To not even consult him. To announce her intentions and march right in there, nose in the air.

If she is honest, she was surprised by how much it had hurt him. She had been used to the evenings of frosty silence, the lack of communication. She hadn't expected him to care at all.

But he had cared, passionately. He had been so angry. She was being reckless, playing with the lives of the crew just because she didn't like to admit defeat. Because she was angry with him and wouldn't let herself admit he was right. The silences turned into blazing arguments.

As much as she hated to admit it, there was a little truth to his argument. Oh, she had believed enough in her plan to use the nanoprobes to negotiate with the Hive, she knew that would work. But there had been a part of her, a rather twisted sadistic part, that had enjoyed making Chakotay angry. He had always been so placid, so unshakeably calm. It had always been frustrating to her. At last she had found a way to get under his skin.

It was sort of fitting that it came in the form of a blonde, well-built Borg, too. There was a satisfaction to the anger and neglect she saw in his eyes after Seven of Nine came on board, the slight edge of suspicion. She played on it.

Stayed with her most of the day, watched her while she regenerated. Talked about her, trusted in her unfailingly, even when she had betrayed them all.

It was cruel, but effective. Chakotay hated Seven. Hated the effect she had on Kathryn, the trust and devotion she inspired in the Captain that he never could. They had bitter arguments over the young drone sometimes. Arguments where he accused them of everything from being lovers to conspiring with the Borg against the Maquis. Insane things. But Seven really got to him.

Kathryn had enjoyed it. Driving him crazy at the shoulder of her beautiful Borg, watching him fill with anger and then take it out on himself. It was the most emotion she had inspired in him in their whole marriage, she thinks now. The most reaction.

She had been able to make him jealous. That was powerful indeed.

Hence Kashyk. Not an affair, but a dalliance. Something that had gotten the crew talking a little. Something that had sparked up another rumour mill and another betting pool. Not that anyone had doubted her marriage. Oh no, she hadn't been able to escape that easily.

But she'd seen rage in Chakotay the night after Kashyk had left. The night after she'd asked Kashyk to stay, Fury like she'd never seen. Oh, her Angry Warrior had been present with a vengeance.

She'd shouted at him, had the usual arguments. Laughed in his face and asked him how he dared when he demanded to know if she'd slept with Kashyk. Then he'd surprised her. 

He'd surprised her by hitting her, a backhanded slap that had rattled her teeth. Then he'd grabbed a handful of hair at the back of her head and pulled her up close.

"Keep your panties on, Kathryn," he had hissed, right in her face. "You're embarrassing both of us."

That was something else.. She had shaken him off, cursed at him and refused to talk to him for the rest of the night, but God, that had been something else.

He'd stormed off to use his boxing program, get rid of his pent up aggression. She'd fallen to her knees in their bedroom, shaking. Terrified. Thrilled. He had HIT her. HE had hit her. He had hit HER.

The next morning, there had been a little red mark on her cheek. Tiny, but unmistakeable. She had looked at in the mirror with wide eyes. The thought of going on the bridge, the Captain, marked in this way by Chakotay's rage ...

She had almost found it too much.

Talking to Tuvok, to Kim. Ordering Paris to make course changes. Speaking to aliens on the view screen. Showing them her blemish, her punishment. Her order to keep her panties on.

All she had known is that she had to do it again. How strange.

So she had. Sure, it had taken her a while to find a suitable candidate, something to humiliate and cuckold Chakotay to the point of violence with, but he had presented himself. Michael Sullivan.

Michael Sullivan the hologram. The stereotype. The ignoramus. Well, until she changed his program.

Then she had booked some private holodeck time just before Chakotay's, lost track of time and forgot to lock the doors. Been confronted by her husband on her hands and knees dressed only in an unlaced corset with the penis of a hologram down her throat.

That had done the trick. He had pulled her to her feet and throttled the life half out of her. Called her a whore and a tramp and told her she should be ashamed of herself. Told her she must be going insane. 

As she had masturbated later alone in their bedroom, thinking of him, she had thought she might be, too.

All the next day, beneath the rollneck, the bruises of his finger marks had throbbed. Excited her. Worried her. What was the matter with her? Why did she want Chakotay's violence but not his love?

She had decided she must have been working too hard. That the stress and the isolation of the Delta Quadrant and her crumbling marriage was too much.

She had poured herself into her work over the next year, kept away from Chakotay as much as she could. Had love and gentleness with Jaffen. Saw no rage from Chakotay over that, just sadness. Just sobbing from him in the middle of the night. She had pretended to be asleep.

Then, they had gotten home. Already it seems like a lifetime ago. A lifetime since she last slept by Chakotay's side, even longer since she last made love to him.

She gets up and picks up her things. Isaac stirs and follows her, his dark head down, his eyes unreadable. She watches her feet, her footprints in the sand, lonely. Goes back to her big white house. Replicates water and drinks it in smooth wet gulps.

Thinks of Chakotay. Walking hand in hand with Chakotay on the 37s' planet, being given flowers on her wedding day and kisses on the mouth. His full soft lips.

She smiles to herself at the thought. She knows it isn't real, these feelings are a form of lie to herself. 

She remembers him making love to her, his passionate face. His face of pleasure in her arms. 

She picks up her hairbrush and untangles the knots in her wet hair. She thinks about finding herself a lawyer, about taking that step. She thinks about Chakotay's reaction.

She wonders if he will be angry. She wonders if he will care at all.

Isaac wraps his arms about her from behind, pressing his mouth into her neck. He wants to make love, and his erection butts against her from behind. Again and again.

She takes him upstairs and gives him a really good blow job, keeping him right on the edge of ecstasy for a long, long time. After he has spent, hot and salty, in her mouth and on the sheets, he tries to pleasure her, too. She refuses. Somehow she doesn't think she is capable of orgasm tonight.

They curl up, a little sweaty and sticky. Then Isaac gets up to work on his concerto. He has to leave in a couple of hours. He has to get a transport somewhere off world, where he will remain for a week or so.

Kathryn isn't going.

After she has slept and eaten a little, she walks with him to the transport station so he can rendezvous with his ship. They kiss goodbye, a little sloppily for something so public. She doesn't wait to watch him leave.

It is getting dark as she walks back home along the beach. There is a little bit of breeze. Her hair blows out behind her head. She feels something that is almost loneliness.

She lets herself back into her house an puts some lamps on, in the living room, in the kitchen, in the bedroom. She replicates a glass of wine. Starts to run herself a bath. The scent of sharp eucalyptus on steam begins to drift throughout her house.

She undresses for her bath, pulling her light summer dress over her head, undoing her bra. Looking at her tan lines in the foggy mirror. She steps out of her panties and picks them up to drop them in the hamper in the bedroom.

Chakotay's there.

Sitting on her bed, dressed in a dark shirt, looking right at her. She starts, and only just manages to stifle an un-captain-like scream. 

She puts her hands on her hips. She's naked, but she's damned if that's going to bother her.

"What the hell are you doing here?" she barks at him in her best bridge voice.

He looks at her with two cold stones for eyes. "I came to see if it was true." he says in a voice of ice.

"What?" she spits.

"If it's true my wife is shacked up with a boy young enough to be her son."

"That's none of your business," she says as she reaches for a robe.

"Where is he?" he asks.

"If you're talking about Isaac, he's not here," she says. "You've missed him."

Chakotay looks with disgust at the semen stained sheets. "Not by much I'd say."

"How the hell did you get into my house?" she demands.

"Your door code is the same as the one on your personal logs," he tells her.

It is news to her that he knows that, too. 

She grits her teeth. "Well, so, now that you're here and you know that it's true, you can get out," she tells him. "I'm just about to take a bath."

"No you're not," he says. 

For a second she feels that frisson of excitement she did in the holodeck. "What?" she asks in an incredulous tone.

"I said you're not," he repeats. "You don't get to order me about and do what the hell you please any more, Kathryn."

"Oh don't I?" she goads.

"No. You're my wife and for once in this miserable joke of a marriage, you're going to treat me with the respect I deserve."

She snorts and turns on her heel, intending to slam the bathroom door on him, put something solid between them.

But he has hold of her, grabbing her around the wrist and jerking her back by her arm. He spins her and flips her, throwing her face down on the bed.

"What the hell are you doing?!" she demands in a voice full of outrage and humiliation. Her face is only inches from the stains on the sheets. "Get off me!"

She struggles with him, twisting and writhing in his grip, and his hands are all over her. She feels them, burning her. She thinks of that tiny mark on her cheek after Kashyk. She thinks of the bruises on her neck after Michael.

He gets a handful of her hair and pulls back her head, forcing her to stop fighting with him. She winces and cries out.

"You're going to hear me out!" he shouts at her. Right in her ear. "No walking out, no running away, no Tuvok interrupting."

"No!" she yells back. "Fuck you!"

"I think we're WAY beyond that."

He pushes her face into the mattress, rubbing her chin and her nose and her cheek into Isaac's come for good measure. She pants helplessly.

"God, Chakotay," she whines. "You're hurting me."

"Good!" he pants. "So I should be. You're a selfish whore, you deserve to be hurt."

"I'm a selfish whore because I have a boyfriend? Because I'm in a relationship? What, you expected me to stay faithful?"

"I expected you to talk to me! To treat me with a little dignity. Not to have the whole crew ... all our fucking friends ... find out our marriage is a sham from the gutter press!"

"I didn't even think you were on the planet," she tells him. "Nor did I think you gave a shit."

He grabs her then, taking her hard round the throat, squeezing. For a second, he almost frightens her. She imagines the bruises. The way they will look like a gift, like a necklace, this time tomorrow. The excitement she will get from looking at them. 

"I gave a shit," he hisses. "I ALWAYS gave a shit, Kathryn."

He flips her over, so she is pinned on her back underneath him. Her robe is open and spread by the struggle. His hips are between her thighs. Sex and violence. 

Then, indeed, he kisses her, and it is not like it was on Voyager. It is not like that at all. It is a kiss of domination, of hatred almost. She barely feels the lust they once had for one another, it doesn't feel like kissing Chakotay at all.

She tries to loosen herself, wrap him in her arms and legs, but he doesn't let her. He doesn't let her move as he thrusts against her sharply, his erection hurting her sheathed in the coarse fabric of his trousers.

She hears herself whimpering out her excitement, begging him. This is not at all how it used to be. 

He has one hand spidered out now around her chin and neck. The constant threat. It turns her on. He has his teeth on her cheek, on her shoulder, on her breast, dragging her nipples into sore points. 

There was always something reverent about the way Chakotay touched her when they were together, but he is not like that now. Once he had behaved as though her skin were made from porcelain. Even when he was enthusiastic he was considerate. 

He is not like that this time. It hurts, it hurts so much as he pushes into her, not just because he is a bigger man that Isaac either. His hands are claws on her hips and buttocks, seizing her, possessing her. Using her utterly. Showing her that she is his piece of meat. His property. His wife.

She loves it. She comes the first time almost at once, jerking, spasming, useless. Embarrassing. 

He thrusts into her again and again, his face above her focused on nothing. She is used to his eyes searching hers as they make love, sharing that connection of souls. It is gone. It is perfect. It is all she wants from him.

He rises up above her and fixes his hands to her breasts as he gets close. A bead of sweat drips from his hair onto her tongue. She comes again, and he is with her, screwing up his brow and flaring his nostrils like a beast and a creature and something utterly wild.

His seed is hot inside her and she loves it. It feels like burning.

Afterwards, they cuddle, oddly. Hands linked. Kissing. More intimate than they have been in years. He traces the lines of her hair with the very tips of his fingers. 

"You took off your wedding ring," he notices softly. The first words he has spoken.

"It's in the bathroom," she says quickly. Smelling him all over herself. Aching.

"I took mine off, too," he tells her. "Threw it. It's somewhere in the ocean on Marg'ella Prime now."

She swallows hard. "We could get you a new one," she offers. In a very small voice.

"No," he says. "We've been there, done that with marriage. It didn't suit us."

She sighs, running an idle hand over the contours of his chest. "No, it didn't," she is forced to agree. In truth she can't see herself having any more of a domestic bliss with Chakotay on Earth than she did on Voyager. 

They had both gone crazy out there, she decides. Something had happened that had snapped them both. 

"I never stopped loving you, though, Kathryn," he tells her then. "Never."

She shakes her head against his chest. "Don't say that," she says. It is perilously close to the husband she despised. "We can't go there."

"I know," he says, and runs his hands over the bruises he has given her. The stinging bites.

Then he pulls away and sits up, pulling on his clothes. 

She watches him in silence. "Are you going to come back?" she asks eventually, when he has laced his boots.

He stands, and grins at her with dimples. "Oh yes," he tells her. "Just when you least expect it."

He smiles at her again and leaves her house. Then she goes into the bathroom and puts her wedding ring back on her finger. This, she thinks, this could be the perfect marriage. 

She stands naked at her window and watches as her husband disappears into the dark night from the dark beach.


End file.
